Microsoft looks to get Nook all to itself for $1 billion

Nook sales haven't been too hot lately.

Microsoft has offered to pay $1 billion to buy the digital portions of Nook Media LLC, according to a report from TechCrunch Thursday. TechCrunch claims to have seen internal documents that suggest Microsoft wants to get its hands on the rest of the digital book business and that Nook Media plans to fade out its Android-based tablets by the end of 2014.

Microsoft bought a 17.6 percent stake in Nook for $300 million almost exactly a year ago, when the digital Nook division split off from Barnes and Noble proper, resulting in a Nook app for Windows 8. Since then, British publishing company Pearson has purchased a 5 percent stake for $89.5 million.

Microsoft appears to want the whole division to itself, though for around $700 million less than the valuation at which it bought into the company ($1.7 billion, last April). Since Microsoft bought in, Barnes and Noble released new Nooks that failed to sell well over the holidays and have since been discounted.

Barnes and Noble also recently added the full Google Play store to its newer Nook HD and HD+ units. But if the company plans to sell and/or discontinue its tablets altogether, the appearance of the play store may not be the beacon of hope it at first seemed to be.

Simple, Embrace and extinguish. If you want to read up on a good and little reported example, microsoft's fahrenheit project. SGI did not do so well afterwards.

Also google "Microsoft Dirty Tricks history"

That's nonsensical. First, Nook is hardly a threat to anyone except maybe Amazon, but not Microsoft. Secondly, purchasing a sizeable e book store and digital content delivery store gives them a pretty good improvement on their current offering in that space (read: Skype).

As you point out purchasing the Nook brand is like purchasing the Skype brand.

Microsoft would get an existing database of customers with a purchase history. All Microsoft has to do is port their purchases into their other products ( Windows 8 Nook Desktop Application, Windows Phone 8 Nook Application, Windows Store Nook Application ) they already have a Android application. All they need is an iOS and OS X and they have the entire market coveredon eBook readers just like Amazon does.

Since 3 of those peices of software can be written in less time then it takes for the entire deal to even be approved this would be a great deal for Microsoft. This assumes that the Nook brand includes the current customers purchases.

The real value is the licensing deals that are alread in place. Its easier to just renew licensing deals then to get them started even for Microsoft or Apple ( just look at the trouble they have trying to get licensing deals so they can release Apple TV/XBOX TV like products that have been rumored for years ).

The Nook app\experience is better then the Amazon one, but Amazon has cheaper prices and better advertising.

Not sure if you mean the tablets as opposed to the actual eReaders but I tend to disagree owning both.. (I've got a Nook Glow, a Kindle Paperwhite, an Asus android tablet, and several phones.)

Amazon allowing you to add stuff to your wishlist anywhere and sync it down to the kindle is a big enough deal, it sucks to have to manually sync wish lists between B&N and a Nook. Then there are the better book prices and better selection. Nook just has more stuff from Gutenberg crammed in to get their book count up, Amazon has a better selection when it comes to stuff you can't just download free for any reader. Amazon's book review ecosystem & recommendation system is also miles ahead.

For the tablet apps I do think the B&N app is a bit better.. they had the "image" magazine support first, but that has had some pretty bad bugs. B&Ns tablet hardware is also nice but that apparently wasn't enough.

They produced the Kin line of phones. The fact the Kin line of phones was an unmitigated failure is one thing, but they did not buy Danger to get rid of them. They purchased them to produce phone hardware for Microsoft.

Success or not, their intention wasn't to remove them as competitors as you seem to be incorrectly implying with your revisionist history.

I think that the impulse to see this as Microsoft wanting to kill a competitor is reasonable, but in this case misguided. Nook was already on its deathbed.

Rather, the commenters who are suggesting that Microsoft is doing this to beef up their Media ecosystem are I think closer to the truth. iPad has the iBookstore, so the Surface will need the Microsoft Windows Live Book Store Professional 2015. (The name they choose may be slightly longer.)

But seriously, it's an odd (desperate?) choice for MS to buy this company. The software is 100% Android/Linux, with DRM from Adobe. I suppose it's better than nothing but still -- are they going to rewrite the whole stack? And are they going to pay Adobe for DRM?

And I'd pay close attention to the college textbook side of the Nook library. As near as I can tell, without being a telepath, in all things Ballmer seems to emulate the One Apple {Steve Jobs} Way. Unfortunately, his timing is either off (Win'8 Phone to Server integrated UI) or several years (too?) late. Next we might see Microsoft try to enter the K-12 book market, as perhaps a free/dirt-cheap offering. I'd count that as the next "tell." Especially with Adobe DRM included.

1. Nooks were Android devices and B&N said they were big proponents of Android.

2. Microsoft sued B&N for using Android, and B&N didn't have money to fight them in court. B&N called Microsoft evil for basically using meritless lawsuits as a form of extortion against Android hardware manufacturers who didn't have the cash to fight back.

3. Microsoft realizes the PR was bad, and offered B&N a deal that included dropping the lawsuit and buying a stake in the Book business.

1. Nooks were Android devices and B&N said they were big proponents of Android.

2. Microsoft sued B&N for using Android, and B&N didn't have money to fight them in court. B&N called Microsoft evil for basically using meritless lawsuits as a form of extortion against Android hardware manufacturers who didn't have the cash to fight back.

3. Microsoft realizes the PR was bad, and offered B&N a deal that included dropping the lawsuit and buying a stake in the Book business.

4. Suddenly B&N loves Microsoft and wants to abandon Android.

That my friends is how Microsoft competes.

Well, this is just business you know. If Microsoft came to me with a few hundred million dollars in hand, what's not to love? .

- "Hey, we suddenly realized suing you is bad PR, how about you stop trashing us, we drop the lawsuit and we throw in 300 million dollars?"

- "OK... should I state publicly that I love you or is it just between friends?"

Seriously, who in this forum wouldn't take the billion dollars they're offering at the moment? It's an effing billion!

I think that the impulse to see this as Microsoft wanting to kill a competitor is reasonable, but in this case misguided. Nook was already on its deathbed.

Rather, the commenters who are suggesting that Microsoft is doing this to beef up their Media ecosystem are I think closer to the truth. iPad has the iBookstore, so the Surface will need the Microsoft Windows Live Book Store Professional 2015. (The name they choose may be slightly longer.)

But seriously, it's an odd (desperate?) choice for MS to buy this company. The software is 100% Android/Linux, with DRM from Adobe. I suppose it's better than nothing but still -- are they going to rewrite the whole stack? And are they going to pay Adobe for DRM?

No worse than when MS bought Hotmail years ago. Hotmail was a pure linux solution.

For the record, Hotmail was FreeBSD last I heard, not Linux. Linux in the mid-90's was not a great enterprise solution.

But seriously, it's an odd (desperate?) choice for MS to buy this company. The software is 100% Android/Linux, with DRM from Adobe. I suppose it's better than nothing but still -- are they going to rewrite the whole stack? And are they going to pay Adobe for DRM?

Microsoft can rewrite entire applications more quickly and at lesser expense than they can rebuild entire license portfolios and customer accounts. The software itself is a pretty small part of the business.

Of course, with this we're going from a bookseller very good at selling books but not as good at software, to a software company very good at selling software that has visibly struggled to commercialize media.

Maybe they're really trying to crib from Amazon, in which the business starts with books and grows from there to swallow everything.

I think it's more of a raw deal than was Hotmail. Ten years ago, MS still had hopes of dominating the server side so converting a big Linux site to Windows may have been a goal unto itself. And to do the migration, they only had to migrate the server side software.

In contrast, Nook has sold a fair number (millions?) of Android devices. Those devices phone home for purchases and re-downloads, so MS will be on the hook for support for years.

Not saying they shouldn't have done this, but ouch. It's gotta be a bitter pill to swallow. I guess MS will be hiring some more Linux developers soon.

If you read the articles, MS is not acquiring the hardware side. Nook Media would keep that, including the support, and phasing out hardware by the end of next year. So no real need to hire more developers or support Android directly beyond what they already do.

I think that the impulse to see this as Microsoft wanting to kill a competitor is reasonable, but in this case misguided. Nook was already on its deathbed.

Rather, the commenters who are suggesting that Microsoft is doing this to beef up their Media ecosystem are I think closer to the truth. iPad has the iBookstore, so the Surface will need the Microsoft Windows Live Book Store Professional 2015. (The name they choose may be slightly longer.)

But seriously, it's an odd (desperate?) choice for MS to buy this company. The software is 100% Android/Linux, with DRM from Adobe. I suppose it's better than nothing but still -- are they going to rewrite the whole stack? And are they going to pay Adobe for DRM?

No worse than when MS bought Hotmail years ago. Hotmail was a pure linux solution.

For the record, Hotmail was FreeBSD last I heard, not Linux. Linux in the mid-90's was not a great enterprise solution.

I just bought a new 32GB Nook HD+ over the weekend for $199 from Best Buy. I'm planning on having it be my primary comic book reader since it has a glorious screen and access to my Comixology, Kindle, Play, and Nook libraries. Plus, it has an SD slot so I can load all my Marvel Comic PDFs (Marvel and a company called GIT used to sell DVD Roms containing scans/PDFs of complete collections of Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Iron Man etc.)

I'm also hoping the larger screen will make it okay to use as a textbook reader (for programming and math textbooks).

I was thinking something similar, but with Microsoft buying them like they did Skype. I don't know, and that's a shame, since the hardware is good.

Hey, Microsoft Skype is a great thing. I didn't know what I was missing until I installed Skype for Windows 8 and got that awesome 27" full screen Skype experience. I'm no longer distracted by any other programs on screen while I'm talking, and the people I'm talking to look at least twice as large as they do in real life. It's great!

Why on earth would you use the full-screen Skype on a 27" monitor? Unless oyu were using it to present or something...

This pisses me off; the main reason Borders got killed off is because market analysts downgraded them for not staying competitive with the nook.

Now, barely two-ish years later, B&N is admitting that the Nook is a pile of shit and killing it off.

WTF; I WANT MY BORDERS BACK!

Eh, Borders sucked too.

If you weren't around before B&N and Borders together killed off all the good independent bookstores, then I'm sorry for you.

I've been around longer than either of them and poored that bottle of beer out on the sidewalk long ago; sucked is irrelevant when every option was shitty, Borders was BETTER so im pissed it got killed off.

Besieds; sucked, better, shitty, evil, worst ... the only adjective that matters now is "fucked," because that is the one that applies to us now that B&N is essentially the entire market.

I just bought a new 32GB Nook HD+ over the weekend for $199 from Best Buy. I'm planning on having it be my primary comic book reader since it has a glorious screen and access to my Comixology, Kindle, Play, and Nook libraries. Plus, it has an SD slot so I can load all my Marvel Comic PDFs (Marvel and a company called GIT used to sell DVD Roms containing scans/PDFs of complete collections of Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Iron Man etc.)

I'm also hoping the larger screen will make it okay to use as a textbook reader (for programming and math textbooks).

I was thinking something similar, but with Microsoft buying them like they did Skype. I don't know, and that's a shame, since the hardware is good.

Hey, Microsoft Skype is a great thing. I didn't know what I was missing until I installed Skype for Windows 8 and got that awesome 27" full screen Skype experience. I'm no longer distracted by any other programs on screen while I'm talking, and the people I'm talking to look at least twice as large as they do in real life. It's great!

Why on earth would you use the full-screen Skype on a 27" monitor? Unless oyu were using it to present or something...

When I went to download Skype, it noticed that I was running Windows 8 and served up Metro Skype. Thanks Microsoft!

This pisses me off; the main reason Borders got killed off is because market analysts downgraded them for not staying competitive with the nook.

Now, barely two-ish years later, B&N is admitting that the Nook is a pile of shit and killing it off.

WTF; I WANT MY BORDERS BACK!

Eh, Borders sucked too.

If you weren't around before B&N and Borders together killed off all the good independent bookstores, then I'm sorry for you.

I've been around longer than either of them and poored that bottle of beer out on the sidewalk long ago; sucked is irrelevant when every option was shitty, Borders was BETTER so im pissed it got killed off.

Besieds; sucked, better, shitty, evil, worst ... the only adjective that matters now is "fucked," because that is the one that applies to us now that B&N is essentially the entire market.

When I went to download Skype, it noticed that I was running Windows 8 and served up Metro Skype. Thanks Microsoft!

From the desktop browser? I ask, because I have Win8 on my desktop, and when I installed Skype, it did nothing of the sort. Maybe it's one of the default preferences, I did set all those to "Desktop" when possible.

When I went to download Skype, it noticed that I was running Windows 8 and served up Metro Skype. Thanks Microsoft!

From the desktop browser? I ask, because I have Win8 on my desktop, and when I installed Skype, it did nothing of the sort. Maybe it's one of the default preferences, I did set all those to "Desktop" when possible.

Maybe it is something that has changed recently. For me, this was two days ago. I did eventually get the desktop version of Skype, but only after having to explicitly look for it and then click through a message saying something like "We are currently updating desktop Skype to make it better, but it isn't ready yet. Are you sure you want to download the old version?"

I just bought a new 32GB Nook HD+ over the weekend for $199 from Best Buy. I'm planning on having it be my primary comic book reader since it has a glorious screen and access to my Comixology, Kindle, Play, and Nook libraries. Plus, it has an SD slot so I can load all my Marvel Comic PDFs (Marvel and a company called GIT used to sell DVD Roms containing scans/PDFs of complete collections of Spiderman, Fantastic Four, Iron Man etc.)

I'm also hoping the larger screen will make it okay to use as a textbook reader (for programming and math textbooks).

I was thinking something similar, but with Microsoft buying them like they did Skype. I don't know, and that's a shame, since the hardware is good.

Hey, Microsoft Skype is a great thing. I didn't know what I was missing until I installed Skype for Windows 8 and got that awesome 27" full screen Skype experience. I'm no longer distracted by any other programs on screen while I'm talking, and the people I'm talking to look at least twice as large as they do in real life. It's great!

Why on earth would you use the full-screen Skype on a 27" monitor? Unless oyu were using it to present or something...

When I went to download Skype, it noticed that I was running Windows 8 and served up Metro Skype. Thanks Microsoft!

You just have to take 5 seconds and request the desktop version instead.

This pisses me off; the main reason Borders got killed off is because market analysts downgraded them for not staying competitive with the nook.

Now, barely two-ish years later, B&N is admitting that the Nook is a pile of shit and killing it off.

WTF; I WANT MY BORDERS BACK!

Eh, Borders sucked too.

If you weren't around before B&N and Borders together killed off all the good independent bookstores, then I'm sorry for you.

I've been around longer than either of them and poored that bottle of beer out on the sidewalk long ago; sucked is irrelevant when every option was shitty, Borders was BETTER so im pissed it got killed off.

Besieds; sucked, better, shitty, evil, worst ... the only adjective that matters now is "fucked," because that is the one that applies to us now that B&N is essentially the entire market.

This pisses me off; the main reason Borders got killed off is because market analysts downgraded them for not staying competitive with the nook.

Now, barely two-ish years later, B&N is admitting that the Nook is a pile of shit and killing it off.

WTF; I WANT MY BORDERS BACK!

Eh, Borders sucked too.

If you weren't around before B&N and Borders together killed off all the good independent bookstores, then I'm sorry for you.

I've been around longer than either of them and poored that bottle of beer out on the sidewalk long ago; sucked is irrelevant when every option was shitty, Borders was BETTER so im pissed it got killed off.

Besieds; sucked, better, shitty, evil, worst ... the only adjective that matters now is "fucked," because that is the one that applies to us now that B&N is essentially the entire market.

Amazon

Not the same as walking out the store with the book in your hand.

Thank god. I like small independent stores, and used book stores, but huge chain stores? Meh, I can live without them. Amazon is a superior experience to B&N, Borders or places like Wal*Mart.

When it comes to tablet offerings though... They may have made a mistake by offering the Nook app. I can just get a Nexus 7, or other tablet but I'm thinking cost effectiveness here, and download the Nook app, the Kindle app, sideload ebooks easily, etc.

The recent price reduction Mothers' Day promotion needs to be where the prices stay, or offer some really special exclusive to the Nook tablet line. Otherwise, I just can't pull the trigger on one.

On the bright side, I'm assuming Barnes & Noble's digital library is about to become integrated into Microsoft Surface tablet offerings. So, they get a prospective bump up in my book.

Does anyone know the contact information for whoever is running Nook these days? I've spent hundreds of dollars on ebooks for Nook, including books I already had physical copies of, because it's simply more convenient, but if MSFT is taking over, that's going to be a lot of repurchasing from Amazon for me (and a reader application that is massively inferior.)

Unless you have money just burning a hole in your pocket and feel the need to blow it, you could just strip the DRM and move it to your new device if necessary.

1. Nooks were Android devices and B&N said they were big proponents of Android.

2. Microsoft sued B&N for using Android, and B&N didn't have money to fight them in court. B&N called Microsoft evil for basically using meritless lawsuits as a form of extortion against Android hardware manufacturers who didn't have the cash to fight back.

3. Microsoft realizes the PR was bad, and offered B&N a deal that included dropping the lawsuit and buying a stake in the Book business.

4. Suddenly B&N loves Microsoft and wants to abandon Android.

That my friends is how Microsoft competes.

Problems: Numerous other Android hardware makers have found Microsoft's patent claims legit and chose to settle rather than fight,

B&N has done nothing that can remotely be called an abandonment of Android. If anything, adding Chrome as the default browser and making the Play store front and center in the latest firmware makes every Nook owner aware that this is an Android device, whereas previously a large portion of them didn't know or care what was under the hood. (But now you can install the Android Kindle app on a B&N tablet!)

If Microsoft wanted to eliminate a line of Android products, all they had to do was NOTHING. Barnes & Noble has been struggling for a long time. Their biggest problem is Amazon, a company that competes for sales of conventional books and with a line of dedicated reading devices and tablets that run a proprietary software layer on top of... Android.

Barnes & Noble would have serious problem without being on Microsoft's radar at all. The idea that Microsoft spent all of that money to get Nook apps on Windows, Windows RT, and Windows Phone is laughable. B&N would happily have taken a small fraction of that to extend their platform to more venues, including one where they were already present in a different form.

Plainly, Microsoft believes there is a viable business there that can compete with Amazon and Google. They have the kind of cash to throw around on such long shots.

This pisses me off; the main reason Borders got killed off is because market analysts downgraded them for not staying competitive with the nook.

Now, barely two-ish years later, B&N is admitting that the Nook is a pile of shit and killing it off.

WTF; I WANT MY BORDERS BACK!

Eh, Borders sucked too.

If you weren't around before B&N and Borders together killed off all the good independent bookstores, then I'm sorry for you.

Except they didn't kill off independent bookstores at all. Amazon and several retailers who have limited amounts of shelf space for books did nearly all of the harm in dominating the market. Amazon was the 800 pound gorilla, making life tough on both new and used sales, though far more on the used side. I used to know of dozens of used bookstores in the LA County area. Now less than a tenth still have retail stores. Many of them still exist as dealers on Amazon, selling books for a penny but charging a lucrative $3.99 to ship it to you.

Venues like Costco, Target, and Wal-mart did far more damage than the superstores because they would suck up nearly all of the bestseller business. The people who based all of their reading purchases on the NYT Best Seller list could get everything they needed without ever setting foot in a dedicated bookstore. This not only pounded the independents but also the big book chains.

Some I've talked to said they're actually doing far better this way than in all the years they had a store. Now they just have a warehouse and office space for a fraction of the cost. It's a very different business though, with little or no face to face interaction with customers. Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena, near Cal Tech, once had an amazing array of used bookstores. The nature of the customer base that made it a good location also doomed it as those same customers were early adopters of online shopping.

Independent booksellers have held up better than I expected back when the influx of B&N, Borders, and Crown superstores was putting multiple massive store in nearly every good retail district. Those places are making a comeback now that the big bookstores are getting a bit thinly spaced geographically. Many people who like B&M shopping will pay more if the location is convenient, especially as gas prices tend high.

The trick is specialization, the same as any retail business that thrives in the shadow of Wal-mart and Target. Deep knowledge of a range of subjects and the best books to recommend is a valuable asset that is difficult for an Amazon to offer or a superstore to cultivate among its staff. It isn't going to make you rich but it may make you a good living doing something you like. Actually liking your job is worth a lot in of itself.

But seriously, it's an odd (desperate?) choice for MS to buy this company. The software is 100% Android/Linux, with DRM from Adobe. I suppose it's better than nothing but still -- are they going to rewrite the whole stack? And are they going to pay Adobe for DRM?

Sure. That's exactly what they did when they bought Danger-- rewrote the entire Java-based stack in .NET for Kin.

Of course, the delay ended up killing Kin, but oh well.

What killed Kin was trying to market a phone with little local functionality after the iPhone had established the viability of smartphones. It wouldn't have mattered who bought Danger (they were actively seeking a buyer with deep pockets to realize their design goals) or what software was under the hood. The entire concept driving the Danger Hiptop/Sidekick generation had become extremely obsolete. It only made sense in a world where the smartphone promise had yet to move from concept to reality.

The only difference the timing would make is whether it was a prolonged painful death or a quick, abrupt keeling over on the sidewalk and being DRT. The big failure was that they failed to see which way the wind was blowing and didn't pull the plug long before the product went to manufacturing, and worse, the expense of marketing. It wouldn't necessarily have made any improvement on the current situation but the money saved would have been far better invested on getting serious about a consumer smartphone OS that much sooner.

Except they didn't kill off independent bookstores at all. Amazon and several retailers who have limited amounts of shelf space for books did nearly all of the harm in dominating the market. Amazon was the 800 pound gorilla, making life tough on both new and used sales, though far more on the used side. I used to know of dozens of used bookstores in the LA County area. Now less than a tenth still have retail stores. Many of them still exist as dealers on Amazon, selling books for a penny but charging a lucrative $3.99 to ship it to you.

This is some serious revisionist history. The mega chains arose during the 80's and 90's and bought out all the smaller chains and independents they could get their hands on. Amazon did not appear until 1996 and did not become huge until the 2000's. By then it was all over for virtually everyone that was not Borders or B&N or one of their subsidiaries.

Conversely, as Amazon has made their bookselling platform available to others, smaller more specialized stores have begun to make a comeback. Amazon as a whole has been a benefit for anyone who values independent book stores, and the death of Borders and likely death of B&N are directly attributable to Amazon and the other factors you list below.

Quote:

Venues like Costco, Target, and Wal-mart did far more damage than the superstores because they would suck up nearly all of the bestseller business. The people who based all of their reading purchases on the NYT Best Seller list could get everything they needed without ever setting foot in a dedicated bookstore. This not only pounded the independents but also the big book chains.

This is very true, and is probably a larger factor than online sales in the decline of bookstores in general.

the article says only the digital part of the distance, but would this also allow B&N to sell Microsoft made Nook hardware in their stores giving Microsoft a boost in physical store locations and B&N additional revenue as a Microsoft reseller?

Considering what awful shape B&N is in, this would be an awful strategy. It would be far cheaper to just keep building their own retail showrooms and partnering with more stable retailers.

Except they didn't kill off independent bookstores at all. Amazon and several retailers who have limited amounts of shelf space for books did nearly all of the harm in dominating the market. Amazon was the 800 pound gorilla, making life tough on both new and used sales, though far more on the used side. I used to know of dozens of used bookstores in the LA County area. Now less than a tenth still have retail stores. Many of them still exist as dealers on Amazon, selling books for a penny but charging a lucrative $3.99 to ship it to you.

This is some serious revisionist history. The mega chains arose during the 80's and 90's and bought out all the smaller chains and independents they could get their hands on. Amazon did not appear until 1996 and did not become huge until the 2000's. By then it was all over for virtually everyone that was not Borders or B&N or one of their subsidiaries.

Conversely, as Amazon has made their bookselling platform available to others, smaller more specialized stores have begun to make a comeback. Amazon as a whole has been a benefit for anyone who values independent book stores, and the death of Borders and likely death of B&N are directly attributable to Amazon and the other factors you list below.

Quote:

Venues like Costco, Target, and Wal-mart did far more damage than the superstores because they would suck up nearly all of the bestseller business. The people who based all of their reading purchases on the NYT Best Seller list could get everything they needed without ever setting foot in a dedicated bookstore. This not only pounded the independents but also the big book chains.

This is very true, and is probably a larger factor than online sales in the decline of bookstores in general.

In a word, nonsense. I'm not engaging in revisionism at all. I'm drawing directly on my experience as someone who was very aware of booksellers in my region and worked in a book store for several years in the early 90s.

Independents were eternally bemoaning how terrible the rise of the chains was but most of them couldn't run a decent business if their life depended on it. What happened wasn't predation but merely evolution. The places that died were those whose owners loved books but weren't very good at serving their customers. Such businesses are always going to be vulnerable to a better organized competitor. Yet there are numerous independent booksellers I can point to that still exist after all of the changes to the business.

For example, Vroman's in Pasadena, CA is still in business after 110 years. Unlike a lot independents, going inside isn't like entering an extension of the owner's home and find they're an awful house keeper. (There was one literal Mom & Pop store I stopped going to because kept their three pre-school age children on the premises, which made it like trying to browse amid the noise and smells of a daycare center.)

As far as the used bookstores go, they blame Amazon more than anything else. A big part of their business is akin to Gamestop: selling the same second-hand merchandise repeatedly. One used bookstore owner I knew took to making tally marks in books as they came into his stock. After a year he found that he sold and repurchased the same books five or six times, making a few nickels and dimes in markup on each sale.

A lot of those books would be items that were long out of print or unlikely to be stocked by the chains. What has happened with the Kindle is that many, many titles have been resurrected and can be purchased 'new.' (No matter when it was first published, a new download isn't moldy, or smell bad, or have evidence of a previous readers poor eating and hygiene habits.) I'm directly familiar with this because I've done such e-book conversion for several elderly authors. I'm currently working on converting a series of SF anthologies from the early 80s. It was my search for some of these items that drove home how few used bookstores remained while independents still held out. I ended up having to go to Amazon in many cases for copies to use for the initial scan and OCR phase.

Competing with non-smelly Kindle files and well organized sellers using Amazon as their storefront is what is killing off the used bookstores who reached their greatest numbers when the superstores were at their height, pumping tons of stock into the secondhand market for them to resell.

Used stores stock is hit and miss while stores dealing primarily in new items can more reliably leverage their specialist knowledge in providing the right item. Thus the current situation is much better for the independents than for the dealers in used books who rely on a storefront for most of their business. As mentioned before, it isn't a route to getting rich but it can be a more viable small business than a large business. B&N may no longer exist as a B&M retail presence by the end of this decade but the independents will still be out there.

If this goes through, does that mean MSFT will control the Nook app on my android devices? Does this mean they get the money when I buy an ebook for Nook? Because that's how it reads.

Does anyone know the contact information for whoever is running Nook these days? I've spent hundreds of dollars on ebooks for Nook, including books I already had physical copies of, because it's simply more convenient, but if MSFT is taking over, that's going to be a lot of repurchasing from Amazon for me (and a reader application that is massively inferior.)

So you're going to needlessly throw money at one empire to spite another? Quite the little psychosis you have there.

If you really want to make a difference, get all of your books from torrents and send money directly to the authors. Cut out everyone in between.

When it comes to tablet offerings though... They may have made a mistake by offering the Nook app. I can just get a Nexus 7, or other tablet but I'm thinking cost effectiveness here, and download the Nook app, the Kindle app, sideload ebooks easily, etc.

The recent price reduction Mothers' Day promotion needs to be where the prices stay, or offer some really special exclusive to the Nook tablet line. Otherwise, I just can't pull the trigger on one.

On the bright side, I'm assuming Barnes & Noble's digital library is about to become integrated into Microsoft Surface tablet offerings. So, they get a prospective bump up in my book.

The Nook apps are not a mistake, they're the core of the business. The Nook hardware is just a high quality host for the app. If there were general purpose e-ink devices in the market already, the devices from Amazon and B&N would be higher priced and be less promoted since the market was already providing a hardware base to suit their needs. But because dedicated readers are by a huge margin the major app for e-ink, it was up to those with a vested interest in more profitable bookselling to get e-reader out into the world.

E-readers are like game consoles. The real money is in the software. The main reason the video crash of the early 80s happened was that the console makers had no control over third party publishing and made no revenue from it. The most important thing Nintendo did was introduce a functional business model for a software platform tied to a proprietary hardware device.

Amazon sells Kindles to create a market for Kindle books. The margins on selling data files via download are so good it would be insane to seek to make anything more than a token profit on the hardware, and enlisting other companies' hardware is even better since it relieves you of many expenses. Google doesn't need to do the Nexus line of phones and tablets but they serve to define the platform and what the company believes outside hardware makers should use as their reference for doing it right.

Paper books are like the era when video games came on costly ROM cartridges. The cost per byte of storage made for a big portion of a game's price. The shift to optical media opened new types of game designs and allowed development budgets to take the lead in pricing decisions and offering the option of lower pricing without concern for the size of the game itself. Thus if you had a production that used a lot of FMV but had been overall inexpensive you could price your game lower and make it more attractive when up against much costlier productions.

The cost of paper and printing is no longer a factor for ebooks. (Lord of the Rings was originally a single volume but was made a trilogy to work around a paper shortage that was driving up costs at the time of first publication.) The cost of storing and delivering a copy of a digital novella is scarcely any less than a doorstop epic. There is a real cost difference but you need to get into a very large number of sales before it matters much. This is the beauty for the business side of e-books. The capital investment for producing that initial file will let you sell a million copies at little additional expense.

The Nook hardware is likely going away soon. Radio Shack had the base model for $20 yesterday and sold out very quickly once word got around. The new access to the Play store is very likely another indicator B&N is preparing the customer base to be cut loose from any ongoing new improvements to the firmware. I wouldn't be surprised if the final firmware is to make the HD+ a standard Android tablet. I already have a microSD card I boot Cyanogen 10.1 from, so I already have an idea of how that would look.

The hardware may go away but Nook as a publishing platform should continue awhile and may even grow.